McLaren have two hundred and fifteen times more points than Sauber. That statistic is quite incredible. This time 2 years ago Sauber were race winners and championship leaders. It’s quite incredible how much they have capitulated since then

Agree with Dan, could we see our first ever 5 way title decider at the last race? The only downside with that would be it’s at Abu Dabhi. But then again F1 is so exciting atm there’ll prob be a good race there.

Bloody Awesome Race…..Something was wrong with the Red Bull Management i think…..Webber should have pitted before…..or they were thinking Mclaren and Ferrari Were going to pit……Feel sad for Force India

That’s the only real explanation for not pitting I think. In fact he recovered fairly well to finish just behind Vettel (who he was catching but seemed to back off…) It was fascinating bit seeing the RBR tyre strategy fail after everyone was predicting Ham etc. would suffer – though it actually did look like that after a few laps. The crucial bits were maybe the McClarens and Alonso getting a lot out of the hard tyres after the early switch, and Alonso getting caught twice as he tried to pass backmarkers.

It was also interesting that the two Bulls were on different strategies from each other with Vettel doing the middle stint on options and Webber doing the final stint… Basically it seams to me that the earlier in the race you got the options out of the way the better, HAM, BUT, and ALO all did their first stint on ‘em, VET did his second, WEB third. I guess they started in a similar order too though. Would’ve been interesting to see how things turned out had Webber not had a grid penalty.

Absolutely. I have a feeling we haven’t seen the end of Red Bull’s dominance yet on high speed corners, and they could still leap frog McLaren in the constructor’s at least once more before the end of the season. The back and forth is very exciting. We have the fifth different driver this year leading the championship at the moment, and there’s no reason to think that Vettel won’t be a sixth at some point before it’s over.

I would hope so too, I was reading something on another site that had a lot of McLaren love after this race, and I wondered how soon we would be bored with them getting the 1-2’s in, as we had been getting with Brawn last year, and with Red Bull qualyfying on top all the time :)

I am glad that Ferrari do seem to do better here, and probably at Valencia. If they have two cars on the podium there, the WCC tightens up again. But I am worried about Massa doing his part of that, actually. So maybe just an Alonso win, with Vettel/Rosberg/Kubica on the podium to tighten things up for the drivers as well?

Webber should have been on the podium, yes. Another race, another strategic Fail by Red Bull Racing. Which team was the one that decided it was so much better to start on primes? By the first stops a few laps in, it was obvious that this was stupid. Why oh why are Horner and his guys still on that wall. Newey is wasting his genius by putting in the hands of these guys every race.

Yeah, probably wasn’t the right call, and on top of the race strategy if they had qualified on the options, they would have taken the fight to Hamilton for pole and things could have turned out very different for them.

I think the right call was in fact to split them. Redbull just didn’t expect the level of tyre degredation, getting the softs out the way early prooved to be the right option only because the track eat the hards as well.

All the same remember what Christian Horner said, if we go well here we’ll be fine everywhere, they didn’t even have an F-Duct an they nearly locked out the front row, Redbull still have the fastest alround car by a way, especially in qualifiying. However the gap has closed an the upgrades Ferrari and McLaren are bringing over the next two races may well close it up some more.

If Ferrari can get their butt in gear, he’s got a definite chance. Though this time he’ll probably be contending with a much less mistake-prone Hamilton, along with Button (proving his worth today as he nipped past said Fernando) and the Webber ‘n’ Vettel show, however that works out.

Alonso’s mistakes continue; Hamilton can look after his tyres; but you have to be impressed by Button’s tyres – they were in great shape – Lewis needs to keep his eye on his team mate who is always hanging within a position or two. I have to say Button is racing very impressively – nowhere as entertaining as Lewis but lucking dangerously within striking distance if the younger man were to make mistakes

As a Lewis fan I’m supporting him to win – but I’m definitely backing Mclaren to bring home the goods. Red Bull still seem to have the odd problems popping up every other race. Ferrari are breathing through one driver, whilst the other one is stumbling.

The problem though is that a mistake nowadays costs a lot more than ever before in terms of points. Just two races ago Lewis seemed to be falling in the WDC race after he crashed in Spain and Webber, Alonso, Vettel and Button racked up points.

It is also much easier to make up points again. Relatively the points of the first few positions just scaled up by about 2.2, roughly.

Plus, there are two more positions to get a few mercy points from, so in the end it is about equal.

The bigger difference is that now there are about 3-4 teams fighting for wins/podiums, and 5-6 teams regularly fighting for those points-positions, making it easier for a mistake to become costlier during the race (despite the 2 extra positions worth points).

Not once this year has the championship leader at the time won a race. The best was Webber in Turkey with 3rd, others never made it onto the podium. Alonso was 4th in Australia, 12th (I think) in Malaysia, Massa was around 8th in China, Button was 5th in Spain, retired in Monaco, Webber was 3rd in Turkey, and 5th in Canada. I wonder if Hamilton can win in Valencia.

And that’s what makes the championship so interesting this year – the leader always f**ks something up, or just isn’t fast enough.